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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I have a few Linux (openSuSE) boxes that I'm planning to replace. Most likely, I'll consolidate a few of them onto one box, either with Xen or running multiple services on the same box.

Does anyone have any suggestions (specifically links to documents/HOWTOs/guides) that cover planning for system upgrades/replacement?

Specifically, I need to calculate the resources (processor speed, RAM, etc.) required on the new box(es).

I was thinking, for starters, of a tool that I could run on each machine that would report best-case, worst-case, and average-case use of processor time, RAM, etc. specifically on a whole-system and process-by-process basis.

I.e. I want to analyze the data and come up with something like "Apache should have 256Mb RAM, and a processor approximately equal to the current one", or "MySQL will probably need twice the RAM and 1.5-2 times the processor speed, as it's using up way too much processor time now."

OK, as a first step I installed Munin (http://munin.projects.linpro.no/) on a few machines. It's a graphical trending system somewhat like Cacti, but it uses check plugins on each individual machine, and RUNS OUT OF THE BOX. No config, just drop the plugins in a directory and it checks them.

Took me about an hour to install, but now I have a pretty good picture of resource usage, and more importantly what's using what. I downloaded a plugin that gives CPU usage % by user, for a specified list of users, and also wrote one that does the same for memory.

Hopefully after a few days, I'll start to be able to piece together the picture from all of my machines and figure out what's going to be needed.